To start us out on our food journey, we recount early memories of flavor. From cinnamon to curry to tomatoes and rosettes with a particularly macabre detour along the way, we'll discuss how flavor memories have shaped our current culinary tenets.
Food Memories
We love the autumn season. Fall is the time for holidays and celebrations. Everything seems richer, brighter, and fuller; it’s literally a time when flavors mature.
We start this episode with some elemental questions: what are the first flavors you remember experiencing and what memories do they conjure?
During this episode, we recollect some of our earliest taste memories and share some fun facts about cinnamon that may surprise you and possibly help you out... Especially if you have to neutralize the odor of a decaying body. (What?!)
Most of us have one (or more) food memories of those poignant early days. Often, we try to recreate those flavors hoping to reconnect to the favorite dishes of our youth yet those iconic flavor memories seem to stay just out of our reach. We share the good news that the reason we often fail to recapture that sacrosanct taste has nothing to do with our abilities as cooks. Psychologists have come up with multiple explanations as to why our earliest food memories feel so powerful and why we fail to recreate the flavors.
Next, we reminisce about foods that our mothers and grandmothers made on special occasions. Food marks so many of our special events. So much so, that it is sometimes these particular foods that make our events special as their essential aromas permeate the air and set off firecrackers of joy in our heads.
As we conclude our exploration of the power of food and memory, we discuss how the rise of ready meals in the 70s influenced the sights, sounds, and smells of our childhood kitchens and changed the very nature of food on the table. Sure, this processed pre-packaged food is fast, quick and affordable, but the real flavor lies in organic handmade cuisines.
Do you have a favorite early memory cooking with a loved one in the kitchen? Tell us your story; we would love to hear from you!
Comfort Foods Transcript
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Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode
Recipes You Really Need to Try
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EP 1: Food Memories Cinnamon Toast, Tomato Sandwiches, and Magic Rafts